Willy Pitcher

HE is forgotten now,
And humble dust these thirty years and more —
He whose young eyes and beautiful wide brow
My thoughts alone restore.

Dead, and his kindred dead!
And none remembers in that quiet place
The slender form, the brown and faunlike head,
The gently wistful face.

And yet across the years
I see us roam among the apple-trees,
Telling our tale of boyish hopes and fears
Amid the hurried bees.

When I am all alone
By the eternal beauty of the sea
Or where the mountain’s eastern shade is thrown,
His face comes back to me —

A memory unsought;
A ghost entreating, and I know not why, —
A presence that the restless winds of thought
Acknowledge with a sigh;

Till I am half content
Not any more the loneliness to know
Of him who died so young and innocent,
And ah! so long ago!